Tag: taxation

Which “Minarchy”?

Kent McManigal

I understand the appeal of minarchy. After all, it’s where I came from; what I used to advocate. Even though I knew I was an anarchist personally, I used to imagine minarchy as the most practical way to be as liberated as possible.

But minarchy– keeping a little bit of cancer around and under control to prevent a different cancer from getting a foothold– is an unsustainable Utopian fantasy. Much more so than anarchy could ever be.

And, it’s confused.

As a minarchist, which “minimal government” would you pick? Only things such as government fire protection, government policing, military, government-controlled roads, and government courts? Other minarchists might have other preferences. Some would include “securing the borders” or other Big Government welfare programs. Any version includes the “taxation” to pay for it all, along with the bureaucracy to collect and distribute the money and find and punish the opt-outs.

Does every minarchist get to impose the particular flavor of “minimal government” they want? If so, it is no longer “minimal”.

Do you use v*ting to decide which bits of government you get to impose on me? Then it’s mob rule– “might (through superior numbers) makes right”.

Through v*ting and “taxation” you’ve cut the brake line on anything holding back government growth.

As I say, I understand, but a “little bit of statism” is still evil.

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There’s No Way to Know Everything

Kent McManigal

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and one many people can’t accept, but you and I can never know everything.

This means if you want to act politically, you’ll come from a place of ignorance whether you mean to or not.

I can’t know the ultimate reality about Anthropogenic Global Climate Change — commonly called “global warming.”

I can’t know all the possible consequences of building a new “Berlin Wall” between America and Mexico.

I can’t know how a total gun ban would affect actual aggression statistics.

I can’t know all the consequences of adopting fully socialized medicine in America.

I can’t know exactly what my life would be like without police, government schools, taxation, laws, and all the rest of the socialistic things I would like to see go away.

And it doesn’t really matter.

It’s enough to know when something violates other people’s rights and liberty; to understand I have no right to violate others even if I can’t know with certainty how things would go if no one violates them.

This knowledge — that I have no right to violate others — is sufficient and essential.

There are people who are arrogant enough to believe they can know it all. They may claim the reason you don’t know it all is because you won’t research it for yourself, or you’re just not smart enough. They are dishonest.

They don’t know it all. They only know enough to be satisfied with the position they’ve taken; a position that justifies their favorite violations of life, liberty, and property. If your research leads you to a different opinion, they’ll claim you don’t know enough until you agree with them.

They expect to use government against those who don’t agree with them on whatever issue they care most about. They’d like to have you on their side; superior numbers, expressed through a vote, to gang up and force others to go along with what they believe.

Yet, even if they are right in their beliefs, they aren’t right about how to carry them out. No one has the right to use government violence to force you to go along with them.

Such a right has never existed and can’t be invented.

Accept that no one can know everything and that no matter what you know it can’t give you the right to govern others, nor to select people to govern them on your behalf.

This knowledge will liberate you.

That’s one thing I can know for certain.

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Uninformed, Misinformed, Brainwashed Statists

Kent McManigal

If you don’t watch “the news” you might be uninformed; if you watch it you will be misinformed.

“News” is opinion. There’s no such thing as just presenting the facts; there never was. There’s always going to be a slant to it. It’s almost always a statist slant.

If they don’t honestly portray cops as a gang, politicians as thieving thugs, government as religion, “laws” as slavery, they are not telling the truth. They are opinionizing. Lying. Covering up the truth to protect the bad guys.

Any bland “news” story about the “arrest” of a drug dealer, and the drugs, cash, and guns confiscated from him, is a nest of lies– opinions, if I were to be nice about it. It will assume statism. It will assume the legitimacy of prohibition, “taxation”, government police, “gun control” [sic], “laws”, the “justice system”, and a hundred other things which shouldn’t be assumed.

They are selling their opinion to people who mostly agree with them (even when they feel they are on the other side), or who they are trying to fool into agreeing with them. It largely works.

I think that’s why you see “Right” vs “Left” in almost all “news”/opinions. All “news” comes from one side or the other… yet the sides are really the same. They are statist, anti-liberty bigots to the core. So the “news” gets people to arguing over which of those identical twins is correct, when they are both wrong.

Statists live in a statist bubble, even if they sample statist opinions from the “other side”. It’s still only statism.

Libertarians don’t have the option of living in a bubble. We get exposed to the other sides. All other sides. Constantly. Whether we intend to or not. It’s unavoidable. That’s why we are better informed than the uninformed or the misinformed statists. And it’s why the statists try so hard to ridicule our position. They have to, otherwise they might realize they are losers going in circles, chasing hallucinations.

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Super Bowl 53, The Meaning of Taxation (15m) – Episode 279

Skyler J. Collins (Editor)

Episode 279 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: the waste of time that was Super Bowl 53; his commitment to remaining a teetotaler; what the existence of and toleration toward the practice of taxation (and other forms of coercion by government) means in your society; and more.

Listen to Episode 279 (15m, mp3, 64kbps)

Subscribe via RSS here, or in any podcast app by searching for “everything voluntary”. Support the podcast at Patreon.com/evc.

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By Excluding The Good Guys

Kent McManigal

One of the justifications most commonly used by borderists for property rights-violating, violent government “border security”, including theft-funded walls and such, is that it will make it harder for people to cross, and any “friction” applied to the process will reduce the total numbers of people crossing. As a result, they claim to believe this will reduce the total number of bad guys getting into America.

Theirs is a faulty argument.

As can be plainly demonstrated with drug prohibition.

Prohibition makes it harder and more dangerous to make and sell politically incorrect drugs. A clear result is that it severely restricts the number of honest “mom and pop” stores entering the drug market. This leaves the market (and yes, there is a market) open for the worst of the bad guys to be the main sellers and producers.

This is not an unforeseeable surprise. It is an inevitable result of adding “friction” to the drug market: more aggression and theft, more fraud and quality problems, and higher prices.

If border security makes it harder, in a similar way, for everyone who wants to get to America, won’t it ensure that mainly bad guys, who are desperate enough to take the risks, will cross into America?

I think it does.

Who’s going to have the stamina to try harder? The beaten down dad who just wants to get his kids to a safer, more prosperous place? Or the life-long archator who doesn’t care who he stomps to get where he wants to go?

You can’t reasonably justify more statism by pointing to the results of current statism.

Let people exercise their right of association, and protect their property rights (and band together to voluntarily, in unanimous consent, protect the property rights of others, including the property stolen by “taxation”) and the “problem” will shrivel away.

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YouTube, Taxation, Voluntaryists, Conquest, & Economics (25m) – Episode 268

Skyler J. Collins (Editor)

Episode 268 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: YouTube’s copyright claim system and the trouble that its causing; why libertarian types complain about what government spends its ill-gotten gains on; voluntaryist time-traveler solutions to the problem of Hitler; the peculiarity in descendants of conquered people sharing in the religious/political sensibilities of their ancestor’s conquerors; the value of economics in shifting moral outrage from market actors to government actors; and more.

Listen to Episode 268 (25m, mp3, 64kbps)

Subscribe via RSS here, or in any podcast app by searching for “everything voluntary”. Support the podcast at Patreon.com/evc.

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